1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system for operating a plurality of personal computers (hereinafter, referred to as PCs) which are in a network environment, and more particularly to an operating system for suppressing the probability that failures are caused by equalizing the operating times of all the PCs involved.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, a plurality of PCs are connected to a network as multifunction online terminals and are administered in a centralized manner by an administrative server installed in the network.
However, when the online terminals are used as personal computers, the status where they are being so used is not linked with the administrative server, and therefore, it is not possible for the administrative server to detect the total time spent using the personal computer function on each PC.
To administer the total time spent using each PC, for example, time spent, purpose of the use and the like are entered in a recording form, and thus the manual management using a ledger has been carried out. A ledger management like this is dependent on individual users, and it is the individual users who report time they spent in using the PCs. Therefore, it is often the case with such a manually entered ledger based on the users' own reports that the entered operating time does not always coincide with the actual time they spent using the PCs, and thus it has always been difficult to detect accurately the time spent by the users.
In addition, the accumulation of actually spent time becomes troublesome with the time management using the manually entered ledger, and the accuracy of the management information so accumulated becomes unreliable, leading to a fact that it is not possible to detect accurately the actual utilization status of the PCs.
To cope with this, when a plurality of multifunctional terminal units connected to a network are used as personal computers, a data collecting unit provided within the terminal unit is designed to collect and accumulate the types of processing, time spent and the like and to send accumulated information to the administrative server, where the information sent from the PCs is collected and edited for centralized management (refer to Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 3-233751).
Furthermore, in a case where a number of terminal units such as work stations are installed, execution time information on the whole processes except for the system process is automatically accumulated for each process unit within a certain time of time, and the accumulated execution time is then sent to a server or a center unit, whereby the actual operating status of the terminal units can be grasped, the operating efficiency of the integrated system being thereby improved (refer to Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 5-113911).
On the other hand, in order to perform a total preventive maintenance management for a tremendous number of terminal units, the number of times a failure happened is stored and held, and maintenance people periodically patrol. During patrol the maintenance people verify the number of failures so held for each terminal unit and service the same.
In contrast to this, there is proposed a method in which failure detection information sent from a plurality of terminal units in a time series fashion is accumulated so as to predict the number of times a failure occurs on and the degree of emergency in maintenance of the terminal units, whereby the maintenance management of the plurality of terminal units are implemented (refer to Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 6-266634).
Furthermore, as a countermeasures against the failure of a distributed processing information system there is proposed a method for multiplexing a system element which frequently fails, and this method provides two systems; a dual system in which other waiting systems are allowed to process the contents of a processing performed by normal processing systems at the same time, and a duplex system in which waiting systems perform processing separate from processing performed by normal processing systems and do processing of the contents of the normal processing systems instead thereof only when a failure occurs.
With these systems, the waiting systems have to have functions equal to those of the normal processing systems, and therefore, the systems have a drawback that the configuration of the waiting systems becomes expensive.
To this end, there has been proposed a duplex system in which failure countermeasures for the distributed processing information system can be realized at lower cost by providing a waiting system data base realizing means which is divided on a small scale within a client function means in the distributed processing information system (refer to Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 9-44450).
With the aforesaid maintenance management systems, however, various types of information on time spent, failures and the like have to be detected and data so detected has be stored and held for each of the plurality of terminal units. This means that each terminal unit needs a device for acquiring such various types of information, this constituting a factor increasing the production cost.
Moreover, in order to realize a maintenance management like this in a system to which existing terminal units are connected, a new device has to be installed in each terminal unit for acquiring various types of information, and additionally, there may be occurring a case where it is difficult to take such countermeasures.
On the other hand, in recent years, as the model change interval of PCs which are used as terminal units has been getting shorter, in installation of PCs, there has been increasing a tendency that PC system operations are leased or rented. There is a demand that once installed, PC systems are operated with stable and less expensive cost while leased or rented. Under these environments, if a PC fails, the loss of data stored and time for an alternative operation is caused, and this reduces the operating efficiency and causes a problem with the utilization of the system. To eliminate such a risk, the failure of PCs must be suppressed to a minimum level and the running cost should be reduced.
The service lives of a general PC and a hard disk are said to be “five years based on eight hour operation per day” and “five years or twenty thousand hours whichever comes earlier,” respectively. Statistically, the longer the operating time, the higher the failure rate, and with PCs having long operating time, failures tend to concentrate on specific PCs even before their operating times expire because the constituent components reach the end of their service lives.
In a situation in which a plurality of PCs are operated for the same time, the management of the operation of PCs has depended upon individual users. This creates a situation in which PCs having especially long operating time and PCs that have not been operated much are mixed together.
In these circumstances, failures tend to occur frequently on the PCs which the user has spent a long time using, whereas there occurs no failure on the PCs having short operating time, whereby an extremely inefficient system operation will be result.
An object of the present invention is to reduce the failure of PCs associated with the service lives thereof to thereby improve the operating efficiency by administering the operating times of the respective PCs with an administrative server and advising the users and administrator to rotate the PCs among those whose operating times differ.